EdVentures in Technology
teaching, learning and change
Archive for Random Thoughts
June 19, 2008 at 2:58 pm · Filed under EdTech, Random Thoughts, TechTalk
If you don’t, you soon may if many wiki platforms have success in promoting their Firefox extension for the Universal Edit Button. The idea is akin to the now almost ubiquitous RSS icon. When you come across a page that is editable, this icon will appear in your address bar letting you know that you have the ability to edit this page. It is hoped that this branding will serve as an open invitation resulting in an increase in the participatory culture that has made the wiki world so unique.
While a terrific step in the right direction, my desire is that wiki developers will seriously consider embedding this functionality into the web experience such that an extension is unnecessary.
“The amazing quality of many wikis, especially wikipedia, makes people afraid to contribute. But wikis want you to edit them. This button is meant as an invitation for surfers to contribute as much or as little as they want.” — Ehud Lamm.
Thanks to ReadWriteWeb for the alert.
Photo and quote provided by UniversalEditButton.org
Tags: wiki, universal-edit-button, ueb, edit, participate, culture
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June 18, 2008 at 9:05 pm · Filed under EdTech, Random Thoughts, Web 2.0
Like many others in the EdTech arena, I’ve been playing about with the tag/word cloud imaging app Wordle. Below is an image which represents the data in my most recent C.V. Interesting to note that in a technology career of nearly 20 years, the most prevalent terms, outside of technology and my online persona EdVentures, are: learning, development and management.
Tags: wordlecv resume vita tagcloud wordcloud visualization
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May 20, 2008 at 9:02 am · Filed under Random Thoughts
Want to help in the fight against childhood cancer? So does St. Baldricks! St. Baldrick’s day has been an annual event in our community for years and yet I knew little about it until this year. Turns out that St. Baldrick’s started as a challenge between three friends hoping to raise $14,000 by shaving their heads. Their efforts expanded and in the end yielded over $100,000! From that beginning, St. Baldrick’s has grown into
“…the world’s biggest volunteer-driven fundraising program for childhood
cancer! In eight years, events have taken place in 18 countries and 46
US states, raising over $34 million, and shaving more than 46,000 heads.” (
http://www.stbaldricks.org/about_us/index.html)
This year St. Baldrick’s wasn’t held in our community. However, my son’s Cub Scout troop put out a call for volunteers and Hunter, along with his friend and St. Baldrick’s alum Ian, have chosen to participate. We have our own connection to childhood cancer, as a family friend and schoolmate was recently diagnosed with and is currently receiving treatment for, a form of osteosarcoma.
So today, my son and I are beginning our fundraising efforts and are looking forward to losing our locks on the 31st. I’ll be posting pics as soon as the shearing begins!
If you would like to donate to my fundraising effort: https://www.stbaldricks.org/get_involved/donate.html?ParticipantKey=2008-53478
If you would like to donate to Hunter’s fundraising effort: https://www.stbaldricks.org/get_involved/donate.html?ParticipantKey=2008-53476
If you would rather not donate online, feel free to download a donation form here: http://www.stbaldricks.org/includes/downloads/donation_forms/53500/2008DonateS53476.pdf
As I type this, Jon Lester has just pitched a no-hitter against the Kansas City Royals. I’ll take this as a good omen, since Jon Lester is a cancer survivor himself!
Tags: stbaldrick, cancer, fundraising, hunter
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May 5, 2008 at 1:37 pm · Filed under Random Thoughts, Web Expressions
I am presenting today at the Business2Business Conference being held at the beautiful Mount Washington Valley Hotel. I was invited to speak about Free and Open-Source Solutions to enhance communication and collaboration in business. What follows is my Google Presentation that will go off in about 30 minutes.
Free Communication & Collaboration Tools for Business
How business can quickly and easily deploy Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) solutions to enhance their internal and external communications, collaboration and marketing efforts.
The recent explosion of content authoring tools such as blogs, wikis, and Google Office have created an untapped opportunity for businesses to improve their ability to communicate and collaborate internally, within the organization, but also externally, in working with partner organizations and development teams outside of the traditional business model. The simplicity and availability of these tools outside of the physical office environment have led to unprecedented gains in productivity, as well as some unique partnerships. This session will serve to introduce participants to the wide variety of tools available and discuss how they might be quickly integrated into their business practice.
UPDATE: Presentation went well. It was recorded, so I may have a copy to post here in the next couple of days. Here is the PBwiki link for those interested in the presentation development and some of the vids we didn’t have an opportunity to view this afternoon. Thanks again to all who attended!
January 27, 2008 at 10:43 pm · Filed under Random Thoughts, TechTalk
I’ve been offline for quite a while. Much of it has to do with my workload at the University but the other part is that where I live in rural New Hampshire, high-speed Internet access is mostly a sweet dream. Trying to maintain a digital identity with a dial-up connection that maxes out at 22kbps was simply an exercise in frustration. Well even that came to an end last week when our phone line suddenly went dead. Turns out that frost heaves pushed up our buried phone cable (which apparently was poorly buried by whoever installed it) and it was promptly cut when our plow guy cleaned our driveway during the last snowstorm.
That led to a decision point: do we continue to pay for a landline when both my wife and I have cell phones with excellent service here at home? Is it worth it just to suffer through on a questionable dial-up connection? Turns out that neither one of us believed it was. So begins our experiment with disconnecting from the physical and going ethereal (ok, wireless). For the cost of our landline at about $50-60/month and the cost of our dial-up connection via PeoplePC at about $10/month, we could get set up with Verizon’s Broadband Access wireless Internet service at $60/month.
I had reservations about how the service would fare at our home but I figured I’d give it a shot. I tried to swing by our local computer guy but his office is closed on the weekend. So I traveled down to another Verizon store and purchased a USB720 wireless adapter and service.
Interestingly, each connector is assigned its own phone number. I wondered how they managed to keep track of service and it turns out they do key it to a phone number. It strikes me as a bit limiting in that it would almost make more sense to attach an IPv6 number instead but I know little about the infrastructure that comprises their network.I was concerned about signing on to a contract but Verizon does have a 15-day return policy and I figured that would be plenty of time to test the typical use cases I would be employing. So now it came down to testing the device. Installation was a snap. Drop in the CD, run the configuration app wizard, attach the device and connect to the Verizon network. In less than 5 minutes I was online and connecting at 684 Kbps download/480 Kbps upload. Now this isn’t great compared to the possible connect speed of the Broadband Access service (600 Kbps – 1.4 Mbps download/500 Kbps – 800 Kbps upload), but considering that we are on the fringes of the deployment of this service and compared to my old connection speed of 22 kbps, I ain’t complaining!
SpeedTest Results – Round 1
Speed Test Results – Round 2
I was even able to install the VZAccess software on my wife’s laptop and our home desktop so that they could use it as well. So far, so good, as all three connected successfully. The only caveat to the plan is that they have a cap of 5 GB per month:
“If usage exceeds 5 GB per line during any billing period, we reserve the right to reduce throughput speeds of any application that would otherwise exceed such speed to a maximum of approximately 200 Kbps. These speeds are subject to change, in our reasonable discretion, in order to address network issues.”
It will be interesting to see how much bandwidth I consume on a monthly basis and the VZAccess software should allow me to track this.
[tags]verizon, wireless, internet, isp, online, usb720[/tags]
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July 3, 2007 at 7:18 pm · Filed under Library, Random Thoughts
A brief look at one of the themes developing in my feeds over the past couple of weeks is enough to wear down even the most ardent tech evangelist and change agent. The continuation of the devaluation of user contributed content begun by Jaron Lanier’s Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism last May is seeing a resurgence as Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur has just hit the stands, and a Wired commentary by Tony Long just landed in my feed reader entitled Internet Smackdown: The Amateur vs. the Professional. I should have known by his title, The Luddite, that he wasn’t what you might call a “fanboy.” Thankfully Lawrence Lessig, in his own fashion, has posted an interesting perspective on Keen’s work, it’s a self-deprecating parody!
I haven’t had an opportunity to read Keen’s book yet and no doubt I will however what really has my head spinning are the treatises posted by former American Library Association (ALA) president Michael Gorman on the Brittanica Blog: Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason, part I, Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason, part II and most recently, The Siren Song of the Internet, part I and The Siren Song of the Internet, part II. Ironic that he’s posting at all, given the way Gorman decries blogs and blogging.
Gorman is throwing out a red herring. The problem isn’t as simplistic as attempting to define who is a professional and who is an amateur. That line gets more blurry by the day, as does the criteria by which we have come to define professional. As a matter of fact I don’t believe that is the problem at all. For me, the problem boils down simply to our growing inability to practice and teach the complex skill of critical analysis. The source of information should always be suspect regardless of medium. Most any human communication possesses an inherent amount of bias, feeling, emotion, passion. We would place no more weight on a watercooler discussion than we should on what we find online. What is needed is the development of a skill set that enables us to evaluate, test and substantiate our sources of information. The next step is to continually test and refine our positions, paradigms and beliefs against our peers so as to never assume that our understanding, our learning, is finite.
I read and appreciated Clay Shirky’s responses to Gorman’s attestations.
And Stephen Downes reflected a Michael Ohlert post which echoes my own sentiments about Gorman’s leaps in logic.
If nothing else, Gorman has at least sparked a spirited discussion amongst the IT and library staff here at Plymouth State University!
(Note: This was intended to be a more indepth post but my notes were lost when my computer kindly “coughed.” Insert friendly reminder to all to please “save as you go.” Notepad doesn’t auto-save! )
[tags]gorman, brittanica, amateur, professional, authorship[/tags]
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July 3, 2007 at 5:05 pm · Filed under Creativity, Learning Theory, Random Thoughts, Teaching & Learning
Now that I have your attention, I will shamelessly admit that the title was just a hook. Yes, you should read this book. If not for yourself, for your children or for your neighborhood’s children. My thanks to Christian Long over at think:lab for his post which brought The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden to my attention.
I just happened to be online in a Borders bookstore after an off-campus meeting when his post came in to my reader. Checked out the author’s site, watched their video, and immediately bought the book for my own motley crew. My seven year old is already hard at work on his knots, having mastered the reef knot and clove hitch, working on developing his own mnemonic for the figure-8 and trying to figure out the bowline.
What I love about this book is that it encourages kids (and those of us refusing to grow up) to get out and play like we used to. As has been pointed out in the blogosphere, learning is messy. So is life. Yes there will be bumps, bruises and tears along the way, but they make the laughter, joy and happiness (dare I say learning?) all the sweeter. This book is just one more reminder.
Now get out there and play!
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June 21, 2007 at 9:27 am · Filed under Random Thoughts
On the heels of the last post is this link from Beth Kanter on a Slideshare presentation on Web 2.0. This one specifically deals with user-centricity and contribution and is easily adapted for use in an educational environment. Using the Wizard of Oz as context, this presentation focuses on five factors: convergence, influencers, the journey, the magic and what really matters.
[tags]slideshare, web2.0[/tags]
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Tags: slideshare, web2.0
March 26, 2007 at 8:33 pm · Filed under Random Thoughts, Social Software, Web 2.0
No I don’t mean porn, I mean the dark recesses of the web inhabited by those whose sense of what is right and decent has been abandoned and replaced with God knows what. It is this part of the web that makes educators cringe and lawmakers pass legislation that hurts everyone but their intended audience.
Kathy Sierra is one of my favorite reads. I’ve been inspired by and have learned so much from her blog and although I do not know her personally, her writing and passion have painted an image of her in my mind. Apparently, her writing has painted other images in the warped and twisted minds of a number of individuals who cower behind their anonymity as they post the most appalling things to a number of sites whose sole intent is to bully others. My own personal sense of decency has led me to choose not to repost the links to those sites here. It is one thing to disagree with someone, but it is something else entirely when your disagreement devolves into death threats and terrorism, as was so sadly demonstrated in Kathy’s case.
I admire Kathy for having the strength to write about her experience. I’m outraged that there are individuals who feel that it is o.k. to terrorize others. What Kathy is living through goes far beyond the pale, to the point that law enforcement is involved and legal action quite likely. To the point where she feels that her life is truly endangered. What sort of example does that set for our youth? It sure doesn’t help our efforts as educators as we attempt to break through the barriers which bar our students from active participation in the community of the web. I’d even like to treat this as a teachable moment if it weren’t for the fact that I wouldn’t willingly expose any student of mind to the viciousness and criminality of this series of events.
My thoughts are with you Kathy. You are stronger than they are. The best I can offer is the fervent belief that the best thing for us to do is to shine a great bright light on the dark side of the web and expose it for what it really is.
[tags]kathysierra, blogging, darkside[/tags]
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February 20, 2007 at 6:21 pm · Filed under Random Thoughts, Web 2.0
Apparently Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) isn’t the only one trying to revive DOPA. Texas Representative Lamar Smith (R) introduced legislation, cosponsored by seven other Republican representatives, to the House on February 6th which intends “To amend title 18, United States Code, to protect youth from exploitation by adults using the Internet, and for other purposes.”
In essence it holds Internet content hosting providers and e-mail service providers legally liable if they or one of their subscribers “knowingly engages in any conduct the provider knows or has reason to believe facilitates access to, or the possession of, child pornography…” The bill goes well beyond Internet Service Providers by further defining an Internet content hosting provider as any service that:
(A) stores, through electromagnetic or other means, electronic data, including the content of web pages, electronic mail, documents, images, audio and video files, online discussion boards, and weblogs; and
(B) makes such data available via the Internet
The definition as written could be construed to mean any service such as mySpace, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and countless others, perhaps even your own blog. If the bill had stopped at at “knowingly engages,” it would be entirely understandable as an overt commission of a crime. My concern is focused on the text following that statement: “…or has reason to believe…” What parameters define ones reason to believe, and what constitutes, as the bill states, “negligent failure” to report child pornograpy?
The bill later sets record retention requirements for Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Section 6 give the Attorney General carte blanche to issue these parameters but hold that the regulations “…shall, at a minimum, require retention of records, such as the name and address of the subscriber or registered user to whom an Internet Protocol address, user identification or telephone number was assigned…” Failure to comply with these record retention requirements will result in a fine and/or a year’s imprisonment.
The remainder of the bill echoes Ted Stevens’ SB37 in increasing fines and prison terms for the exploitation of children and for activities relating to material constituting or containing child pornography. It also requires warning labels on commercial websites containing sexually explicit material. And Section 12 cites an authorization of appropriations to the tune of $30 million dollars for each FY 2008-2012 “to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to carry out the Innocent Images National Initiative.”
The problem with this bill, as with DOPA and Senator Stevens’ latest incarnation, is that it employs fear to manipulate the public into accepting this loss of freedom and personal privacy. As a father, I am all for protecting our children from predators, online or otherwise. But I am not foolish enough to believe that allowing the government to track all online activities will serve that end.
We do need to protect our children, but that begins with education and awareness at their level, not at the governmental level. If the old adage that knowledge is power holds true, then I would rather that knowledge be in the hands of our children, that they could learn to protect themselves.
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